The tenor got its name from holding the tune, not from singing high
Tenor comes from the Latin for to hold. In early church polyphony the tenor line carried a borrowed melody in long notes while other voices were built around it, and it was usually the lowest part. Only in the 18th century did the word come to mean a high male voice.
Today the tenor is the highest male voice sung in chest voice, sitting between baritone and countertenor. Choral writers usually keep tenors between the B two below middle C and the G above it, while opera stretches the range from B-flat up to the C an octave above middle C. Choirs almost everywhere struggle to find enough of them, because most men's voices sit in the baritone zone, so baritones often stretch upward and contraltos sometimes fill in.
That famous top note is less common than its reputation. Several high Cs in the standard operatic repertoire are optional, or were added by tradition, as in Di quella pira from Verdi's Il trovatore. The highest note actually written in mainstream tenor roles is a D, in Adam's Le postillon de Lonjumeau and Halévy's La Juive, while Bellini's I puritani asks the lighter leggero tenor for a startling F. Few singers, Nicolai Gedda among them, have managed that role without transposing. The French tenor Gilbert Duprez, born in 1806, was the first to sing the operatic high C from the chest on stage rather than in a reinforced falsetto.
Singers and teachers divide the voice into seven overlapping types. The leggero is light and agile, suited to Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini. The lyric tenor is warm and bright; the spinto adds weight for dramatic climaxes; the dramatic tenor rings with power, from the dark mature Caruso to the steely Francesco Tamagno. The German heldentenor, or heroic tenor, is built for Wagner, above all the gruelling role of Siegfried. There is also the Mozart tenor, and the tenor buffo, a character actor for small comic parts. Voices can migrate between types over a career.
Outside opera the label shifts again. In barbershop quartets the tenor is the top part, sung mostly in falsetto above the lead who carries the tune. In bluegrass, tenor means a line a third above the melody.
Source: Tenor
